Technical Abstract:
Cucumber, Cucumis sativus L. is an important vegetable crop worldwide. In the past two years significant progress has been made in cucumber genetics and genomics research. The whole genomes of three cucumber genotypes have been sequenced and assembled. Nearly three million ESTs from different tissues were generated. Hundreds of microsatellite markers were developed and a high-resolution cucumber linkage map is available. Several horticulturally important genes have been cloned. The taxonomy of Cucumis has undergone major revision and expanded from 32 to 52 species. We have also gained better understanding of the evolutionary relationships among cucurbit crops at the chromosome level. In this study, major findings during last three years in these areas were reviewed; perspectives of translational and comparative genomics research in cucurbit improvement are discussed.